← Back to all Customer Success Stories

The Challenge

This global biopharmaceutical company focuses on developing and delivering therapies for patients with rare and devastating diseases, work that depends on a complex, fast-moving pipeline spanning complement and metabolic clinical programs as well as a wide range of preclinical programs across multiple therapeutic modalities. With numerous projects and resources dispersed across departments, the organization was struggling to track and report on its portfolio accurately.

Program and clinical study schedules needed to be tracked with precision, and the sheer complexity of the business meant more than 100 enterprise custom fields were required just to reflect how Pharma Development and R&D actually worked. Without a shared system of record, resource utilization insight was limited, and leadership lacked the visibility needed to compare capacity against demand and keep strategic projects moving forward.

The Solution

PPM Works implemented Microsoft Project Online for approximately 50 users managing more than 100 projects, with careful attention paid to matching the platform’s configuration to the company’s existing Pharma Development structure rather than asking scientific and program teams to change how they worked. Because tracking programs and study milestones with precision was non-negotiable, PPM Works built out SQL Server Reporting Services reports specifically for R&D program and study milestone tracking, alongside a dedicated data warehouse that now feeds business intelligence across the entire organization.

To help the team get up and running quickly, PPM Works also deployed its pre-configured Pharma Report Pack, giving the organization a proven reporting foundation on day one instead of a lengthy custom build. The Project site itself was extended to track progress against goals and functional team status, so that the portfolio-level view and day-to-day execution stayed connected rather than living in separate systems.

The Results

With a single source of truth now in place for program and study milestones, the organization can do the kind of forward planning that used to be impossible: harmonized project planning, more proactive long-term forecasting, and budget allocation that leadership can actually see and trust. What started as a reporting problem became an opportunity to give scientific and program teams more time back for the work that matters most: advancing therapies for patients who are waiting for them.